Real estate trends

2 Dallas neighbors climb to rooftop in new ranking of best home markets

Frisco home for sale, 11042 San Pedro St

This lovely Frisco home is on the market for $429,000 — right about the city's median price.

Photo courtesy of Redfin.com

Frisco manages to keep generating positive buzz. Last year, it was declared one of the country’s fastest-growing cities. In 2018, Money named Frisco the best place to live in America. And the city even appeared atop a recent ranking of the country’s best places to be stuck at home during the pandemic.

Now, Frisco has another national accolade to crow about. In a ranking released August 25 by personal finance website WalletHub, Frisco grabs the No. 3 spot among the best cities to buy a house.

WalletHub divided data into two buckets for its ranking: best real estate market, and best place for affordability and economic opportunity. Frisco snags the No. 13 ranking in the real estate category, and the No. 1 ranking in the affordability and economy category. For its study, WalletHub compared 300 cities across 24 key metrics, including median home-price appreciation, home-sales turnover rate, and job growth.

Among the 24 key metrics, Frisco ranks second for the country’s lowest foreclosure rate.

Ahead of Frisco on WalletHub’s list are Boise, Idaho, at No. 1 and Seattle at No. 2. Frisco is joined in the top 10 by two other Texas cities: Austin (No. 7) and Denton (No. 9). In last place: Miami Beach, Florida.

Both Austin and Denton score well in the real estate category, with the former ranking fourth and the latter ranking eighth. However, both cities earn mediocre marks in the affordability and economy category: No. 76 for Austin and No. 59 for Denton.

Data compiled by Frisco real estate agent Rene Burchell shows the median price of a single-family home in Frisco reached $430,000 at the end of June, up from $426,500 a year earlier. In June, 375 homes were sold in Frisco, compared with 340 the previous June and 240 this May. Burchell says homebuyers in Frisco face competitive bidding and reduced inventory, pushing up home prices.

The Collin County housing market “was very active in July, with a large number of buyers seeking homes priced under $400,000,” Plano real estate agent David Long, president of the Collin County Association of Realtors, says in a release. “The high demand has started to result in slightly higher sales prices, but not nearly enough to outweigh the incredible interest rates buyers are locking in.”

West of Frisco, real estate brokerage Redfin classifies Denton as a “very competitive” homebuying market, with many homes up for sale attracting multiple offers. Over the past 30 days, the average sale price for a single-family home in Denton was $276,000, up 8.8 percent since last year, according to Redfin.

rankings wallethub home-for-sale lists

GP News

Grand Prairie expands to the south with new master-planned community

Rendering courtesy of Provident

Goodland Grand Prairie

The City of Grand Prairie is growing fast and expanding to make way for a new master-planned development south of US Highway 287 and along Tollway 360, in Ellis and Johnson counties.

The community development, called Goodland, is the result of Grand Prairie’s recent 1,500-acre annexation extending its southern border toward Mansfield. Overall, with the added land, Goodland will be a 5,000-acre site featuring 15,000 residences including townhomes, custom homes, and gated communities for 50,000 residents.

According to a release, it will be a “city within a city” and a 45-minute drive from Dallas-Fort Worth. Beyond housing, there will be shops, restaurants, schools, public and private event venues, regional sports fields and complexes, dance halls, churches, trail systems, city parks, ponds, and preserved green spaces.

“This is a significant step in our city’s development,” says Grand Prairie Mayor Ron Jensen in a statement. “Unlike many of our neighboring cities, we have the unique advantage of new development opportunities to our south that will drive the growth and prosperity of our city. We recognized the opportunity and took decisive action.”

Leading the development is Provident, a Dallas-based real estate firm that has created other master-planned communities across Dallas-Fort Worth, such as Preston Hollow Village and Hillstead in Collin County. Provident has plans to work nature into the space design with more than 1,600 acres of creek corridors and floodplain land.

Plans are ongoing for a centralized mixed-use walkable Town Center, complete with civic buildings and other commercial development. Further south on the property near Highway 67, light industrial uses and other private employment campuses are already underway, projects that will contribute vital tax dollars for city growth and future expansions.

“This level of placemaking is quite rare, and certainly not easy to execute, especially in a brand-new community," says Provident Managing Director Rylan Yowell in a statement. "We are committed to a long-term vision with a desire to be good stewards of the land."

A new four-lane road called Goodland Parkway will link Goodland to Grand Prairie at Tollway 360 and US Highway 287. It's set to open by December 2025.

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